Photo Finish For December Auto Sales Could Mean A Slight Gain For All Of 2018

U.S. auto sales for 2018 could beat last year’s sales by an eyelash, according to forecasts for December auto sales.

Forecasters also predicted a slight downturn in auto sales for 2019. LMC Automotive said it expects 2019 auto sales of about 16.9 million to 17 million, down about 1.5% from a predicted 17.3 million units for all of 2018.

That’s a pretty mild forecast for 2019, considering the U.S. auto industry’s history of cyclical ups and downs.

It's coming down to the finish line, whether U.S. auto sales in 2018 beat 2017.

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In a joint forecast for December 2018 sales, LMC Automotive and J.D. Power predicted U.S. auto sales of about 1.6 million, down less than 1% from a year ago. Separately, Cox Automotive had a directionally similar forecast. Automakers in the U.S. market report December and full-year 2018 sales on Thursday, Jan. 3.

Several headwinds for 2018 figure to continue into 2019. Those include higher sticker prices, rising interest rates, the effect of new international tariffs, the relative collapse in demand for passenger cars as opposed to trucks, and the automakers’ own strategy to try and keep a lid on incentive spending.

Despite those potential negatives, sales for the full year 2018 could top 2017 sales, by about 60,000 units out of 17.3 million, according to a joint forecast from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive.

That’s just about where 2018 U.S. auto sales stood year to date through November. After 11 months, year-to-date sales were about 15.7 million cars and trucks. With one month to go in the year, that’s a bare increase of about 0.4%, or 61,000 units from the same period a year ago, according to figures from the Automotive News Data Center.

Last year, 2017 marked the end of a record run of seven years of annual increases in a row, dating back to the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, when new-vehicle sales fell to the lowest level per capita since World War II.

Those results — down just 1.8% in 2017, to about 17.2 million — caused a lot of concern that a more serious cyclical downturn could be starting.